Interruptions

Maybe it's ADD, or maybe it's just laziness, but I have a lot of trouble with interruptions. Not that I have a greater number of them than anyone else, but that I let the interruptions disrupt my life.

Sometimes I feel guilty for not having more strength of character, figuring I should just click into "multi-task mode" and get on with everything. Or--click OFF "multi-task mode" and put on blinders and concentrate. But then I feel guilty for not paying attention to the interruption, especially if it comes from a human source. Especially if it's family!

Suffering resentment is a waste of time-- I am quite sure of that. My subliminal resentment seems to burble along nicely without any special treatment, so unnoticeable it doesn't distract me; but it gradually escalates as I go along. Then someone will say something unchallenging like "kinda hot today" and I brim over and say "STOP STOP STOP! I can't concentrate!"

This sort of thing is not good for family relations. Then I have to say "sorry" and feel guilty.

It's a lose-lose situation!

But it's MY problem to solve, and it has been my problem for sixty some years.

REPORT CARD: First Grade:
"Her mind wanders. She doesn't pay attention. She daydreams. She has trouble finishing her work She interrupts.(moi?) She walks off while we are in the middle of a lesson."

I remember well being badly disgruntled in my growing-up years that we had to have dinner at seven in summer. Other kids had dinner at six. That's when the backyard ball game would be interrupted for a time and all the other kids went in and ate. Then, when they came back out, Mother was calling us IN! Interrupted! By the time we were finished, the other kids were off somewhere--it was getting dark and the ball game was over.

Boarding school was good, later on, because they had rigid dedicated times and places for specific activities and enforced quietness, as in a library. AND they marked you on your performance. I am competitive as well as distractable and maybe that has been a saving grace: if there is a measurable reward for the successful completion of the task, I will get super-directed and feisty, close out everything else, and get it done whatever the cost to friends or personal needs (like eating or sleeping.)

Later I had a career which was interrupted by marriage. You could say my marriage was interrupted by children for two or three decades, and my career, well, it was so interrupted it turned into four or five careers. Truncated! Advertising! (I got married.) Art! (I had children) Teaching! (I had more children) Computer programming! (I had grandchildren) Online entrepreneurship! (I got back to my art) Art! (I moved) and so on.

I've been reading through The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael Gerber. There are three strong persons in a successful entrepreneur, it tells me. I am one, but not the other two. The idea person is alive and well, but there is no technician fussing about the details nor is there a manager doing the selling and public relations. I am told that it takes all three to make a success. Oh well.

Now I'm technically retired, but I still have a life to run. My husband still doesn't buy that I am "ADD", but I'll bet my grown kids do. I drop non-sequitors into dinnertime conversations and, after a puzzled silence, they move on with what they were saying, and ascribe it to either my ears (not so good any more) or my head (still the same old Mom.)

My husband accepts that when I don't answer him reasonably, or at all, that I am trying to stay with what I am doing. If he persists and gets through to me, I have learned to say, "I'm concentrating right now, love." He has learned to ask for an appointment: "just maybe five minutes of your time and attention?", and that pretty much works for us.

While I wrote this the Phillies played some innings of a game with the Colorado Rockies. They started out fabulously well, but now the Rockies are coming back with a lot of runs. I can hear the game in my right ear. And I want to go watch it and cheer for the Phillies. So I will. (Hmm.)

Green Thumb